Groan
by UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: Four completely normal days in Yoshika's life: Bellowing poetry, attempting to eat wildlife, defacing monuments, and chasing intruders.


A butterfly floated through the air of the graveyard, carried by subtle currents, its wings barely fluttering to keep it aloft. It came to a rest on Yoshika's outstretched hand, and she leaned forward to inspect it. Its delicate wings caught the sun, casting a riot of colors across her skin like a stained glass window: a one-of-a-kind piece of art, a small piece of Heaven on the mortal plane. Dainty legs applied the slightest bit of pressure as it crawled across her skin. Antennae twitched curiously in the air.

 _CHOMP._

Yoshika lunged forward and snatched the butterfly up with her teeth, and didn't even bother chewing before she swallowed. Afterward, she gave a satisfied, "Bwargh."

Some time passed. The sun set. It came up again. Yoshika didn't pay it any mind. The sun wasn't edible or a threat to the mausoleum, so it wasn't of much concern to her.

Outside the cemetery gates, Kyouko walked across the Myouren Temple's courtyard, a broom over her shoulder for her morning duties. She paused and gave Yoshika an expansive wave. "Good morning, miss jiang-shi!"

"Good morning!" Yoshika called back.

"Good morniiiiing!"

"Good morniiiiiiing!"

"GOOD MORNING!"

"GOOD MORNING!" Something in Yoshika's chest gave a deep gurgling noise from the exertion.

Kyouko was beaming now. She reared back, sucking in a deep breath to put her full force into her next shout. " **GOOOOOOOOD MOOOORNIIII** —!"

"Kyouko...!" a voice called from one of the temple's balconies. "Can you cut it out? I've got a hangover."

Kyouko stopped mid-shout, her ears drooping guiltily. "I'll see you later, miss jiang-shi!" she called, at a much more conversational tone of voice.

Yoshika didn't acknowledge it. Yoshika didn't acknowledge most things. Within five minutes, she'd forgotten that the exchange had even happened.

The sun crept through the sky, and nothing much happened. At some point, Yoshika remembered that she was supposed to do morning stretches, and she bent forward, her arms clawing at the air in a futile attempt to touch her toes.

She fell over. She spent most of an hour squirming around on the ground and trying to stand up. At some point, she noticed a nearby rock, and scooted her way over to gnaw on it. A while later, she managed to stand up again and tottered over to stand in front of the mausoleum.

Some more time passed. Voices approached. Ichirin and Murasa stepped out from the maze of gravestones between the mausoleum and the back of the Myouren Temple.

Yoshika watched them approach, until her brain finally kicked in after about ten seconds. "This is no place for the likes of you to enter!"

Ichirin stopped in place, looking from Yoshika to Murasa and back again. "What about this girl?"

"Eh, see," Murasa said. 'That's the real benefit of using this place for storage. Scares everybody else away from this place. Well, there are the Taoists, of course, but they barely stop by once every few weeks. Perfectly safe, apart from the zombie."

Yoshika paid this conversation no mind. "Turn back at once or face my wrath!" she bellowed. When they didn't budge, she added a groaning, "bwargh!" just so they'd know she was serious.

"Right, okay," Ichirin said, ignoring her. "So how do you deal with her?"

"Easy," Murasa said. "Watch a master and learn."

She stepped closer, and Yoshika's protective instincts kicked in. "Beeee goooone...!" she moaned, and lumbered forward, her teeth already snapping at the air. She leaned in... and Murasa rested a hand on her forehead. Yoshika groaned and continued pushing against the ground, but somehow, no matter how much she tried to walk, she didn't seem to get any farther. "Glurgh," she moaned mournfully.

Ichirin eyed this display. "It's really that easy?"

"Sure is," Murasa said. "Get the door, I'll keep her here."

"Aye aye, captain!" Ichirin walked over to the massive stone door of the mausoleum. She grabbed the handle and braced her feet, then grit her teeth as she dragged it open, with a seismic creak echoing through the air. "A-ah, I should have brought Unzan. This still seems like a lot of work just to hide stuff, doesn't it?"

"It might be, but." Murasa wasn't even bothering to look at Yoshika anymore, now that she'd gotten her hand into a position where Yoshika's snapping jaws couldn't brush her wrist. "Byakuren's out a whole weekend, after all. We can go through a lot of booze in two days. Kind of hard to hide it anywhere else."

"I guess so." Once the crack in the doorway was finally wide enough to step through, Ichirin released the handle with a sigh of relief.

"There we go. Follow me."

"Do not disturb the mausoleum or you will become one of my sisteeers!" Yoshika groaned. Murasa released her head, and Yoshika trundled after them in frantic pursuit. She'd almost crossed half the distance to the door before Murasa tugged it closed behind them.

"Blurgh," Yoshika announced to the now-empty graveyard. She walked up to the doorway and gave it a push, but it didn't budge.

Within ten seconds, she'd forgotten what she was doing anyway. She shuffled over and stood in her normal position in front of the mausoleum, and she'd just settled back in when the doors opened again.

This time, Murasa and Ichirin were carrying a jug of sake, half as big as they were, crouched down and maneuvering it with handles on the side. They'd already closed the door behind themselves before Yoshika remembered her duties and started walking toward them. "Doooo not take things from the mausoleuuuum!"

Murasa sighed. "It's our own booze, you half-rotted half-wit."

"Doooo not take things from the mauuusoleeeum...!"

"What do we do...?" Ichirin asked.

"Just keep walking."

The two hefted the jug and continued toward the temple. Yoshika walked stiff-leggedly toward them, her outstretched hands clawing at the air. They passed her before she'd even closed the distance, and were soon walking away through the gravestones. "Do not take things from the mausoleum!" she repeated. They didn't seem to hear her.

Soon, they turned the corner around the temple's side and disappeared.

Yoshika settled into position with a dissatisfied gurgle.

Normally, most things slipped from Yoshika's mind in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. There were two orders written on the talisman on her forehead, which was a lot to keep track of for somebody who had a one-track mind on a good day. Her two orders were:

* Do not allow anybody else to enter the mausoleum.  
* Do not allow anybody else to take anything from the mausoleum.

She'd just seen both of these rules broken quite egregiously. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was some lingering scrap of human dignity that was outraged at how easily the evildoers had avoided her. Maybe her brain was just slightly less rotten than usual today. For whatever reason, though, Yoshika began stomping toward the temple. It was a long journey at her pace. At one point, she got tired and had to stop to gnaw on a tombstone.

Soon, she walked into the back wall of the temple, with a soft, "glurf," of surprise. She clawed at the wood, but it didn't accomplish much. She tried eating it, but that didn't work either. With all of her options exhausted, Yoshika started marching back and forth along the rear wall of the temple, giving the occasional mournful groan.

The sun set. Some raucous sounds came from within the temple. The sun rose again.

Yoshika was starting to get hungry. She didn't need to eat for energy, but all this walking was taxing her rotting muscles. She tried eating a chunk of the temple again, but it was too flat to wrap her mouth around.

Right on time, a stray cat strolled around the side of the building and sprawled out in the sunlight. Yoshika froze in place and stared at it. The gears slowly ground in her head until she realized that she could, in fact, eat it. "Blarf!" she announced happily, and started shambling toward it.

The cat glanced up at her curiously, which slowly turned to annoyance as she approached. She bent down as far as she could—not very far—and swiped a hand at it. With a low hiss, it turned and took off toward the temple courtyard.

Yoshika followed, but she was no match for an annoyed cat. By the time she rounded the corner, it was nearly out of sight. She was halfway around the temple when it dove into cover and disappeared. By the time she reached the front of the temple, it was long, long gone.

She gave a low groan of confusion and looked around. It was late afternoon, and the trickle of visitors to the temple had already dried up for the day. The courtyard was empty apart from rows of statues of various buddhas and bodhisattvas, with a wide circle of cobblestones at the center. She meandered around the perimeter, moaning, "Caaat." The cat didn't show itself.

But, her mind was drifting, glacially, _tectonically_ , back to her original mission. She needed to find the stolen thing. It was in the temple. The temple was right there.

The temple was right there, and the door was propped open. From somewhere deep within, the sound of laughter came.

Yoshika stared at this blankly for a few minutes, until she decided to go inside. She shuffled forward and through the doorway, and nobody came out to stop her. Within, the temple was well kept, polished wood and brightly-colored paintings of religious iconography. She shambled past without giving any of it a second look. It was neither her goal nor particularly interesting-looking food, and those were the only two things her brain had room for right now.

Turning a corner, she walked down a long, dark hallway. There were pots along one side of it. She wrapped her arms around one, effortlessly hefting it up, and took a thoughtful bite of the rim. As she ground the pottery to dust between her teeth, her mind churned away. This wasn't the pot she was looking for. She dropped it to the floor, and her footsteps crunched over the resulting shards.

The noise was coming from further down the hallway. She headed for it; less out of any conscious decision than sheer dimwitted instinct. At the end of the hall, a single doorway was open, with warm candlelight spilling out. Over the course of two minutes, she shuffled over, then stepped through.

The room inside was one of the largest in the temple, a wide open meeting room with tatami floors. At the moment, it was strewn with pillows, and atop them were scattered most of the Myouren Temple and assorted hangers-on, cups in their hands and laughter on their lips. Yoshika barely even registered this, though, because in front of her was the object of her quest: The pot that had been hauled out of the mausoleum the night before.

With a happy groan, she started making her way toward it. The sound of the gathering quieted down, as one by one, every eye in the room turned toward her.

"Eh?" Mamizou lowered her pipe from her mouth and let out a long, thoughtful exhale, blowing a cloud out across the room. "Who invited the corpse?"

"Oh, oh!" Kogasa said, leaping to her feet. "That girl! I know her! From the graveyard!"

Yoshika didn't stop walking, but it gradually dawned on her that she'd been noticed. "Doooo not steal from the mausoleeeeeum!" she groaned.

"This isn't your mausoleum, dearie," Mamizou said. "Think you might've lost your way a mite."

"Hey, let's get this straight!" Ichirin said, rising to her feet as well. "We didn't _steal_ it! Murasa's the one who put it there in the first place!"

"The grand treasures of the mausoleum are not for thieves...!" It was one of the few longer sentences that Seiga had been able to impress upon Yoshika, and it had been trickling its way down to her lips for the past minute or two.

"This one might be a bit soft in the head," Mamizou mused, tucking her pipe back into her mouth. "Reckon anyone will mind if we throw her out a window? She's upsetting my delicate temperament."

"Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to leave...!" Ichirin sank to a fighting stance. With a low, slightly annoyed rumble, Unzan flowed across the room from the oversized mug he'd been nursing at, bubbling up into an imposing silhouette behind her. "Will you let me show you the door? I'd really rather not do this by force..."

Murasa sighed, and tugged the pot out of reach just as Yoshika lunged for it. "Don't need to be making a mess. Besides, if you throw her out like this, she'll just wander back in in two hours. That's how this type is. Here." She reached over and ripped the instruction talisman off Yoshika's head.

Every train of thought in Yoshika's head came to a screeching halt, as her mind went completely blank. She froze mid-step, and barely managed to not topple over. The pot was forgotten, as were most things. Unzan's massive pink fist scooped her up, flew out a balcony window, and deposited her on the ground behind the temple, where she wobbled for a few seconds before falling over.

The sun fell. It came up again.

Yoshika stood up. She looked around the graveyard blankly. A few more hours passed.

She had no reason to, but yet, she wandered forward.

A tree overhead, in full bloom, rained flower petals down on her. She snapped at a few with her mouth, but failed to catch any. The wind stirred its branches, and a single green leaf drifted down on the currents. It smacked her on the face. She froze again, staring at it from barely a centimeter away. She groaned and tried to claw it off of her face, but her arms couldn't bend far enough to make it happen. Blindly, she walked in circles, with increasingly frantic speed. She felt weird. The sight was awakening long-dormant senses, memories slowly bubbling up from the depths of her brain.

"The weather clears..." she groaned.

She wandered in a circle around the tree.

"Breezes coooooomb. The hair of the young willoooows."

She stopped in place and stared out into space. The leaf drooped down on her face a centimeter or two, just far enough for her to reach it. She snatched it up in her mouth and thoughtfully chewed on it for a while.

"The ice is melting."

She was feeling weirder now. She looked around the graveyard, not because she was looking for food or anything related to her goals, but because it felt right.

"W-wavelets wash the whiskers of the old bog moooooss _."_

Such a long sentence left drool trickling down her chin, but completing the poem filled her with a strange sense of satisfaction. She started walking forward, because she __wante__ d to. She walked into the round courtyard in front of the temple, and started walking laps around it.

"Wave-lets wash the whis-kers of the old-bog-moss. Wave-lets wash the whis-kers of the old-bog-moss. Waaaaave..."

A wooden cart rumbled up the pathway from the village, with something cloth-draped and meters tall sitting atop it. In front, Byakuren strode, pulling it along with no apparent concern despite its size, and Shou strolled behind it. Shou eyed Yoshika as they approached, but said nothing. Yoshika greeted her by enthusiastically slurring, "Old bog mosssss!"

"Oh, hey, you're back!" Murasa shouted from the door of the temple. "How did it go?"

"The statue is finished," Byakuren said, with a nod of greeting. "The tengu were very helpful."

"The wea-ther clears breezessss comb!"

Ichirin stepped out behind Murasa, giving a wave toward the two new arrivals. "Do you need any help unloading it?"

"Unzan's help would be welcome," Byakuren said. "It weighs a bit much even for me."

"Theeeee hair! Of the young will-owwwwws."

Murasa eyed Yoshika as she approached, giving an annoyed groan. "Want me to get the zombie out of her _e_ _?"_

"No, she can stay if she wants," Byakuren said, smiling, with a shake of her head. "Even the undead can receive the Buddha's teachings. You should know that better than anyone _."_

Murasa shook her head with a mutter that suggested otherwise, but kept her complaints to herself. Ichirin and Unzan came out to join the group, and over five minutes of careful maneuvering, Unzan and Byakuren hefted the statue from the cart and rested it in the center of the courtyard.

Yoshika kept tramping in a circle the whole time. "Wwwwavelets wash the whiskers!" she groaned, as the statue settled into place.

Byakuren tugged the cloth away from it. Beneath, it was a massive, finely detailed statue of Bishamonten, spear in one hand, the jeweled pagoda held in the other, in front of his stomach.

Delicate traces of gold filigree gleamed around the head of the spear, and the entire pagoda was coated in it, shining in the morning light.

The others stepped back to inspect it. "Huh," Murasa said. "Shiny."

"I was afraid it might be too gaudy," Shou said, with a self-conscious glance to the side. "We obviously want people to respect Bishamonten, but it can't be too excessive."

"I think it looks just fine as it is," Ichirin said. "A nice balance, you know?" Unzan rumbled his approval.

"Old bog moss!" Yoshika groaned. In an uncharacteristic display, she'd stopped to look over the statue. It, too, twinged something deep inside of her. There were... __feelings__ _._

The group of Buddhists lingered around the statue for a few more minutes, making small talk and catching up on the events of the weekend—but, curiously, not the drinking parties that had happened in Byakuren's absence. One by one, they drifted back into the temple. Byakuren, the last to go, walked over and gave Yoshika a polite bow. "Miss Miyako, if you're interested, we're having a sutra reading shortly. I need to go inside to prepare for it, but you're welcome to attend if you'd like."

Yoshika stared at her blankly for a few seconds, but words presented themselves to her, from a source that for once had nothing to do with her instructions or the hard-fought memorization that Seiga had led her through. "Noooo thank you!" she groaned, and after a moment, added, "Old bog moss!"

"Of course. Even so, you know where to find us if you change your mind."

Byakuren excused herself with another bow, and Yoshika went back to stomping in circles around the statue. The longer she went, the more shattered minutia shook free from the tatters of her mind. She remembered a fragment of another poem, but after chanting, "Old crane, serene at heart!" for fifteen minutes without resolution, she drifted back to the first one.

"Oh, miss jiang-shi! Good morning!" Kyouko shouted from the temple's front step, her broom over her shoulder.

"Good morning!" Yoshika shouted back.

"Gooooood morniiiing!"

"Good morniiiiing!"

"Ah!" Kyouko gave a delighted snicker, but didn't press her luck with four or five echoes this time. She walked closer and leaned in, peering over Yoshika with polite concern. "Huh... it's weird to see you this far from the tomb. Is everything okay?"

Yoshika's brow furrowed as she considered that. She was feeling very strange, but it wasn't a __bad__ kind of strange. Very confusing, though. After ten seconds of thought, she echoed, "Okay!"

"Oh!" Kyouko peered at her forehead. "Somebody took your paper! That was mean...! It tells you what to do, doesn't it?"

This question was a bit philosophical for a jiang-shi. After considering it for a few seconds, she gurgled, "Old bog moss."

"Hold on! I'll be right back!"

Kyouko hurried into the temple, and she was gone for quite some time. Yoshika went back to circling the statue.

Kyouko returned. This time, rather than a broom, she was carrying a strip of paper. "Here!" she said, offering it up. "Bend down!"

Yoshika bent down. Kyouko rose onto her tip-toes and pressed the paper to her forehead, pushing it until something very sticky near the top adhered. Yoshika straightened up, and the paper drooped down.

In drippy, still-drying ink, it said:

 **TAKE IT EASY!**

Kyouko beamed at this, while still looking bashful at the same time. "I'm sorry! I didn't know what it said before! But! I like this one too! It always looks like you're working really hard back there, and I've never seen you take a break! So now you can relax, right?"

Yoshika's eyes went blank as the new order sank in. Fragments of poetry and Old Bog Moss rapidly faded from her mind, as her already-tiny world grew far simpler again.

It was nothing to worry about, though... not that she could have worried about it if she wanted to. Once more, her entire world revolved around a single phrase.

"Take it easy!" Yoshika droned.

"Take it easy! Right!" Kyouko's little tail swished behind her. "Oh, um!" She glanced back toward the temple. "Miss Hijiri's doing a reading thing soon, so I've gotta get going, but I'll be back later, okay?"

"Take it e _eeee_ _asy!"_

"Right! I'll see you in a bit!"

Kyouko hurried inside. Yoshika took it easy, which meant flopping down on the cobblestones in the very spot she was standing, and then staring passively out over the courtyard.

A bird landed on her head. She made a halfhearted attempt to eat it, then went back to Taking It Easy.

The breeze blew a drifting layer of flower petals over her legs. She Took It Easy. The chanting tone of Byakuren reciting a sutra drifted from one of the balconies on the temple, and Yoshika continued Taking It Easy.

As she sat there, the still-wet ink on the talisman oozed downward. A few details ran together, but it remained readable. A drop of ink trickled down to merge 'It' and 'Easy.' A few more very slowly crept downward, joining the two more fully. Blobs of ink started running over the now-drying lower word, then past it. Bit by bit, the formerly-legible characters oozed together into a blobby mess, and the vital, final word became unreadable.

The talisman now read:

 **TAKE IT**

Yoshika went cross-eyed as she stared at this. They were only two words, but they still took some time to sink into the rotting folds of her brain. If she'd been very intelligent at all, she would have realized that Kyouko probably hadn't intended for 1/3 of her orders to become unreadable. If she'd been much smarter, she would have wondered what she was intended to take.

Yoshika was none of those things, so with a soft, "Klurf," she stood up and immediately started looking for an It to Take.

Her first target was one of the well-trimmed shrubs that demarcated the circle at the center of the courtyard, but grabbing it and giving a tug, she just came away with a handful of leaves. She tried a few more times before giving up.

Next, her gaze settled onto one of the small bodhisattva statues lining the area. She wrapped her hands around the head and tugged on it with all her might. She had, when she wanted to, a lot of might. Her rotting body creaked and groaned, and then the statue did, too. With a sharp crack, the statue's neck shattered, and the head came free in her hands... then clattered to the ground. Yoshika groaned and bent down, swiping her hands at it, but she couldn't reach it. After five minutes of shambling around the courtyard, accidentally kicking it along as she tried grabbing it, she got distracted and moved on.

Finally, she spotted the new statue at the center of the courtyard. The shiny golden ornamentation drew her eyes in, making it hard to focus on anything else. She grunted with anticipation as she shambled up, then wrapped her hands around the golden pagoda.

Yoshika leaned back, tugging on it with all of her might. The pagoda was attached to the statue somehow, which was good, because she fully intended to pick up the whole thing and carry it. It was a challenge, though, a ton or two of stone resisting her attempts to move it. With a groan, she leaned back, putting more weight on it. A bone or two popped out of their sockets under the stress, filling the air with unsettling noises, and she paid them no mind.

The sharp sound of a fracture spreading through stone soon drowned it out, anyway. It didn't last long, but it was soon joined by another, then another.

The statue's hands exploded into chunks of rock, as the bolt at the bottom of the pagoda ripped itself free. With the pressure suddenly released, Yoshika stumbled backward before falling on her back, the golden pagoda still laying on her chest.

"Urgh." Like a turtle stuck on its back, Yoshika's legs pawed ineffectively at the air. Her arms... were mostly dislocated by this point, but she gave them a try anyway, disconnected bones making them flop around atop her like empty socks. Thankfully, her regenerative capabilities kicked in pretty quickly, and she had two whole arms before long. This only helped her so much, but it gave her a bit of leverage to press against the ground and rock side to side. Slowly, over the course of minutes, Yoshika managed to roll herself over, then push herself upright.

She had a new dilemma now, since the instructions hadn't told her where to Take It. For a while, Yoshika wandered around the courtyard, pagoda in hands, groaning in confusion. She caught a glimpse of the mausoleum, though, and it twinged something inside of her. She didn't really have the concept of a home, but it was the closest thing, and it was generally where she belonged. Without much further thought, she stomped off toward the mausoleum and took up position in front again.

She took a bite out of a nearby gravestone to recover the energy she'd lost from regenerating. Some time passed., but not that much. The chanted sutras from the temple continued, carried on the breeze. Something about them sounded vaguely familiar, but she didn't have much room to think about that right now. All she cared about was Taking It, and she'd done that. Thoughts were altogether unnecessary.

"Oh, Yoshika, dear," a voice came from the air above her, and Yoshika craned her head to see, as Seiga came in for a landing. "What's that you have there?"

Yoshika had no answer. She offered the pagoda up, with a happy explanation of, "Take it!"

"I don't mind if I do." Seiga lifted the pagoda and turned it over in her hands, inspecting it. A few remaining clumps of stone fell to the ground, and she looked at them quizzically, but smiled. "Well, it's lovely, isn't it? Where did you get it?"

Yoshika stared forward. Answering a question like that was above her cognitive pay grade at the moment. The memory was already fading, anyway. "Taaaaake it," she moaned.

"Yes, yes, I already have. Let's just say it's from a secret admirer then, shall we?" Seiga shot Yoshika a wink, then paused, leaning in to inspect the talisman on her head. "Oh! My poor dear. That's what has you all confused. Somebody replaced your instructions, didn't they?"

"Oooooogh," Yoshika replied.

"Hmm, let's see..." Seiga ripped the talisman from Yoshika's forehead, and Yoshika's mind went blank again. She slumped in place, staring out over the graveyard blankly, for a few minutes, while Seiga made preparations. After a short while, she slapped a new talisman onto Yoshika's forehead. "There we go. How's that?"

Yoshika glanced up at her new instructions.

 _*_ Do not allow anybody else to enter the mausoleum.  
* Do not allow anybody else to take anything from the mausoleum.

Yoshika studied the instructions in silence for a full minute. "Do not disturb the mausoleum!" she groaned happily.

"Right! Exactly!" Seiga tucked the pagoda under one arm, then leaned in, wrapping the other around Yoshika and ruffling her hair. "My cute little jiang-shi has done such a good job at that, hasn't she? Hasn't she?"

"Yeeeees."

"Good girl! Good girl!" Seiga gave her a smooch on the forehead and pulled back, smiling. "And thank you for the gift, dear. I'll be sure to put it somewhere nice."

"Yooooou're welcoooome." Even Yoshika had a basic grasp of manners.

Seiga gave her another kiss on the forehead and spent a few minutes fussing over her, checking on her joints and refreshing some of the anti-rotting spells on her body. Then, she took off, disappearing in the direction of the nearest entrance to Senkai.

With a job well done, Yoshika settled in to guarding the mausoleum, giving a groan of contentment. The sun went down, and then came up again. The Buddhists walked out of their temple, and there was a lot of shouting as they found their defaced statue. Yoshika paid it no mind, as she did most things.


End file.
